Rowley Hospital 2014-12-01 Person 1 5 0

My wife was a patient at Rowley Hall in 2012, where she had a mastectomy and a latissimus dorsi rebuild. She also had a full axial lymph node clearance at the same time. When we first visited the hospital we were shown one of the bedrooms (what now turns out to be their best bedroom with a new wooden floor). The room she received was not as nice as the one we had seen but initially we were not that disappointed. Following her operation (11hours), her immediate care in post op and immediately following that on the ward were second to non. However, this was the point that things started to go wrong. Unknown to either of us she was moved to another room nearer the nurses station. This room was not as nice as the previous room, which in itself had been a disappointment. Her shower was apparently an extra place for storage and was unusable. The beds at Rowley were not electronic and it was impossible for the patient to raise and lower the bed on their own. Anyone who has had a latissimus rebuild needs an electric bed to help move themselves. A mastectomy and lat rebuild is a very significant operation which is very debilitating to the patient in the first few weeks after the operation. If a patient can raise and lower themselves on an electric bed then the pain and discomfort is lessoned considerably. I cannot emphasize this point enough. Although the nursing staff seemed to be competent and polite they were sadly lacking when it came to reading patient notes. The staff changed frequently and each time there was a change in staff there was the same unfortunate result. The staff assumed that my wife had just had a ‘boob job’ (presumably because they saw far more of those go through the hospital). They all tried to get my wife out of bed after the first night and most expected her to be leaving the next day. No one seemed to read her patient notes and the following points resulted: She was expected to be more mobile and they kept trying to get her to get out of bed (clearly impossible following such a major operation). My wife overheard the nurses discussing how they were going to try and make her get up the following day, one of them joked ‘taze her, taze her’. Some staff refused to help her to sit upright and claimed that she should be doing it on her own and quoted health and safety concerns to themselves. She was washed and the six inch scar on her back was disturbed because the nurse did not realise that it was there. The lack of empathy towards my wife considering her operation was staggering. I am being as generous as I can when I say that this must have been due to a lack of note reading and a lack of understanding of the seriousness of the operation. Rowley Hall web site prided itself on its food and their chef. The quality of the food was disgusting!! My wife often had to choose between a very poor sandwich and an inedible microwaved soup. Rowley do not have a chef, they have a woman who puts things in a microwave. Obviously costs have been cut and the rooms and food have suffered the most We chose Rowley in part because we know how important adequate nutrition is to a patient following an operation. We were never more disappointed than we were here. I would end this by saying that I am not one of those people who revel in giving poor reviews, I am fifty years old and this is the first I have written. I hope this review helps someone make the correct choice for their care.